Casey Anthony Verdict Spurs Call for ‘Caylee’s Law’

An online petition site has been inundated with people wanting to show their support for ‘Caylee’s Law’, which would make it a felony for parents not to report the death of a child to law enforcement within an hour of discovering the incident, or within 24 hours in the case of child disappearance.

According to The Wall Street Journal, more than 285,000 – and counting – people across the country have signed onto a virtual campaign calling for a new federal law that would make it a felony for parents not to alert police over a missing child within a reasonable amount of time.

But some question the constitutionality of such a proposed law. Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law scholar at Harvard, points out that criminal laws usually fall within the realm of state jurisdictions.

“This is an understandable reaction to a verdict that people feel unsatisfied with, but violating the Constitution would hardly solve the problem,” Tribe told the Law Blog. “There is no basis I can see for any congressional power to deal in this broad way with all cases of injury — and perhaps fatal injury — to children.”